Steve Jones

My background is I have been working with computers since I was about 12. My first "career" job in this industry was with network administration where I became the local DBA by default. I have also spent lots of time administering Netware and NT networks, developing software, managing smaller IT groups, making lots of coffee, ordering pizza for late nights, etc., etc.

I currently am the editor of SQL Server Central and an advocate/architect at Redgate Software. I am also the President of SQL Saturday, maintain the T-SQL Tuesday monthly party, and remember our colleagues at sqlmemorial.org.

You can find out more about me on my blog (www.voiceofthedba.com) or LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/way0utwest)
  • Interests: yoga, reading, biking, snowboarding, volleyball

SQLServerCentral Article

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The UNISTR Function

I am not much for working in languages other than English. That's my native language and I know little about others. However, the last few years I find myself using emojis more and more in quick communications as they seem to add some fun to the interaction. And those interactions need to be stored in […]

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2025-12-05

70 reads

Blog Post

PASS Keynote Shots

Rodney Kidd took some great shots of the keynote and published an album here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127113040@N04/albums/72177720330695911 A few of my favorites: Here’s one of the 8 ball and keynote (and...

2025-12-04

3 reads

Architecting Power BI Solutions in Microsoft Fabric

Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Power BI are used by a wide range of professionals, creating diverse and complex scenarios, and finding the right solution can be daunting, especially when multiple approaches exist for a single use case. The author distills his 17 years of experience on various data platform technologies in this book to walk you through various Power BI usage scenarios.

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2025-12-03 (first published: )

3,485 reads

SQL Cookbook: Query Solutions and Techniques for All SQL Users

You may know SQL basics, but are you taking advantage of its expressive power? This second edition applies a highly practical approach to Structured Query Language (SQL) so you can create and manipulate large stores of data. Based on real-world examples, this updated cookbook provides a framework to help you construct solutions and executable examples in several flavors of SQL, including Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.

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2025-12-03 (first published: )

1,841 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

SQL Server Licensing is Simple

Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]

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2025-12-03

137 reads

Blogs

The Benefits of Teaching

By

Even preparing for a class or seminar with set materials takes a lot of...

Power BI, Excel, OneLake – Dreams Do Come True!

By

I can’t believe it’s finally here! A way to have Excel live in OneDrive...

The Book of Redgate: What Our Staff Says

By

This image is from 2010, and it goes along with my last post of...

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Forums

Deny Connect problem

By Brandie Tarvin

I have a login I need to deny connect to on a server, but...

Website Stability 2025/12/05

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

All week we've had issues with the site being up and down. There's been...

403 Forbidden

By Phil Parkin

I created a post (or tried) in the 2022 Admin forum. https://www.sqlservercentral.com/?post_type=topic&p=4694880 But it's...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Fabric Mirroring

In which versions can I mirror a database from an on-premises SQL Server to a Fabric data warehouse?

See possible answers